Plastics Crisis: Less Plastic when Traveling

On my recent road trip to Texas, I managed to avoid more single use plastic than ever before – and part of the rationale was to reduce my risk for encountering cyclospora!

For my breakfast on the road, I stopped at a travel plaza for muffin that was in a case (unwrapped) and retrieved with tissue paper rather than a piece of plastic. They had plastic bags, but I didn’t get one…just held it in the tissue while I paid for it! It was not a place I had stopped at previously but ,now that I know I can get breakfast plastic free there, it has become my stop of choice on subsequent trips to Texas.

I opted to not buy a packaged salad to eat at a rest stop further down the road since they inevitably have iceberg and/or romaine lettuce and come in a plastic clamshell. I stopped at Chili’s for chicken fajitas instead. It cost more and took a little more time….but there was a lot less single use plastic!

As I had done previously – I took some food with me for my evening meal and brought my own bowl to hold the breakfast the hotel provided. On one of the mornings the person monitoring the breakfast service commented favorably about my bowl while I put a little pepper on my scrambled eggs.

On the way home I stopped at the usual diner for lunch – this time getting steamed veggies rather than salad (again to avoid cyclospora). The only single use plastic was a straw (since I wasn’t fast enough to decline it).

I am getting more adept at avoiding plastic when I travel. I hope more businesses that cater to people traveling will reduce their use of plastics….making it easier in the future.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 22, 2026

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

07/30/2026 Project Drawdown Is climate change unfolding faster and fiercer than scientists expected?  - Climate change is driving unprecedented extreme weather around the world, from catastrophic floods and prolonged droughts to blistering heat waves and raging wildfires. While these events are unprecedented, they were not unpredicted and largely align with what scientists have been warning about for decades. Climate science tells us that things will get worse as long as humans keep emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But the science also shows us that a better future is still within reach.

08/07/2026 Smart Cities Dive For local governments, full benefits of ROAD to Housing Act could take years - The bipartisan legislation promises sweeping regulatory reforms and funding incentives designed to increase housing development.  Of the 124 implementation actions detailed in the bill, HUD is responsible for 88, or 71%.L ocal governments can begin assessing what regulatory changes — such as updating zoning, building codes and permitting policies — they will need to enact to take advantage of federal funding once it becomes attainable.

08/09/2026 Cool Green Science Bug Highway: The Hidden Paths Used by Insects - Many important pollinators have home ranges no larger than 400 or 500 meters. Some are even smaller. So, in order for them to survive, they must find something to eat within their home range, the distance they’re willing to stray from their nests. And that means every window box, every garden, every bit of green space could be what some insects need to survive.

08/10/2026 Our World in Data 138 million children are in child labor. What does this actually mean? - Child labor is work that is done by a child and is likely to be harmful. This general principle was first codified in international legal conventions more than a century ago, and a series of them in the 20th century made its scope more precise, linking harms to work that endangers children’s “health, safety, or morals” or work that interferes with their schooling. It spans children working in exploitative and dangerous conditions, as well as children who are counted not because of the conditions they work in, but because they are too young to be working at all, even if that means helping on a family farm for only a few hours a day.

08/05/2026 NASA The Paradox of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park - The coastal dune system in Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in northeastern Brazil is among the most surreal landscapes on Earth: rows of sparkling white quartz dunes, some rising 30 meters (100 feet), soar over a mosaic of blue and green freshwater lagoons.

08/11/2026 My Modern Met Mini Wildlife Portraits Made with Plastic Toys and Other Materials That Threaten Real Animals Today – Look at the pictures and watch the 6-minute video about how they were created.

08/10/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Spinal Deformities in Saber-Toothed Cat Fossils Reveal How the Now-Extinct Felines May Have Spent Their Final Days - Thousands of years ago, sticky tar pits in modern-day Los Angeles, California, became the graveyard for prehistoric felines struggling with deformities and disease. 3,722 vertebrae from at least 849 saber-toothed cats were examined. CT scans revealed a significant number of developmental abnormalities in the feline spines. The team identified 32 vertebrae with arches that hadn’t completely developed, 48 “block” vertebrae where bones had fused together and 226 “transitional” vertebrae that hadn’t formed correctly. Perhaps most notably, three vertebrae from different individuals contained enlarged holes that allowed nerves and blood vessels to thread through them. The holes’ sizes and smooth remodeled surfaces hint that the cats had spinal nerve tumors.

07/24/2026 Project Drawdown Reversing soil degradation 10% could feed 70 million more - Human-caused damage to soils is a limiting factor for food production on agricultural lands. Soil degradation can be slowed or reversed. Reversing degradation by 10% could make it possible to feed 70 million more people while also enhancing soils’ ability to pull greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and reducing pressure to turn forests into farmland.

08/11/2026 NASA Bountiful Roebuck Bay - Roebuck Bay's tidal range can reach a remarkable 9 meters (30 feet). Rising and falling tides repeatedly inundate and expose expansive mudflats, flood broad mangrove forests and salt marshes, and feed branching networks of tidal drainage channels. The bay's dramatic tidal and seasonal changes are striking from above, and they also support a bounty of life on the ground. The mangroves serve as nurseries for crustaceans and fish, and the mudflats teem with dozens of types of invertebrates, including snails, worms, crabs, clams, and cockles. Shells and snails can reach an abundance of 2,500 per square meter. The bay, one of the most important sites for migratory birds in Australia and a key stop on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, regularly hosts hundreds of thousands of birds, including plovers, godwits, and knots.

08/10/2026 BBC Future We're getting mealtimes wrong - here's the best time to have dinner - Aim to eat at regular times and eat fiber-rich carbohydrates such as whole grains, legumes (beans, peas and lentils) as well as fruit, earlier in the day when the body is better able to process them. In the evening, opt for a lighter meal, ideally one rich in protein….making lunch the largest meal.

Plastics Crisis – The Personal Economics of Less Plastics – Update

Last January I posted about what I had done over the later part of 2025 to reduce plastics around my house and the advantages we were observing. We are still benefiting from the investments I made without a lot of additional investments since January. I’ve notice that our grocery lists are generally shorter and we have less trash and recycle….and we aren’t feeling the full bite of inflation as much as I thought we would.

Trying to reduce plastic in all my purchases has encouraged more thoughtful purchasing. It slows me down enough to decide not to purchase something…realize that the item is not a ‘need’ and that I don’t really want it enough to purchase it. Identifying (and avoiding) ultra-processed food is another goal that seems to correlate with plastic reduction! What’s not to like about reduce costs and eating better at the same time.

I’ve refined some of my behaviors over the past few months that have reduced plastics further:

• I have a collection of cleaned out/reused peanut butter (glass) jars that I use for making sugar water for my hummingbird feeder and am reusing the lovely green glass bottles (lemon juice) for storing filtered water in the refrigerator (or for the ice chest when we travel).

• Our store has catsup in glass bottles again – and we have started purchasing it rather than the larger plastic bottles. It works well for us since we do not use it as often as we have previously.

• I have enlarged my ‘favorite salad dressings’ to include honey – lemon….and am able to easily find honey in a glass jar and lemons in a bin without packaging at the store. I haven’t bought salad dressing since my original decision to avoid plastics in close contact with acidic or oily foods!

• The net plastic is sometimes less or similar between fresh and frozen foods. I have started buying frozen broccoli, corn, and peppers/onions rather than fresh. They reduce prep time for stir fry and there is no wasted food (i.e. something going bad before I can use it). The plastic is probably not degrading into the food since it is cold! I never cook the frozen vegetables in the bag even if the bag advertises that it is OK to use it to steam the veggies in the microwave.

• I had planned to use violets in salads this summer and it worked well. The cyclosporiasis outbreak is an added motivation for me to continue to use this green – although this late in the season the leaves are better cooked than raw.

• The main area of investment now is clothes. I am gradually replacing things that  are 100% synthetic (i.e. plastic: polyester, rayon, nylon, etc.) with equivalent items that are 100% natural fibers or a blend that is dominated by natural fibers. It is unfortunate that Amazon searches tend to return synthetic items – overriding the search terms completely! Sometimes local stores have what I want….and I am checking their stock more frequently now.

Progress is slower now…but I am still enjoying discovering ways to reduce plastics in my life!

Plastics Crisis - Potluck Event

I recently went to a potluck event and realized that there are quite a few people bringing dishes in metal or glass rather than plastic! Most of the dishes still have plastic lids – but still, the direction is encouraging. The (catered) barbeque came in a foil container with a cardboard top. Note that the serving pieces are metal too!

The host provided paper plates (maybe plastic coated) but one family brought their own plates and utensils just as my daughter and I did.

Everyone had their own water reusable bottles since it was a very hot day. There were very few single use cans or plastic bottles.

The trash and recycle kitchen sized bins did not overflow!

Plastics Crisis – School Supplies

It’s still full summer…but the beginning of school is not that far away. Although I don’t have any K-12 aged children – there is a Missouri Master Naturalist core training I am in the final stages of planning that will be happening in September and October. School/office supplies are something to think about.

I have a lot of office supplies that have accumulated over the years so most of the time I simply draw on what I have rather than buying anything. Printer paper is my most frequent purchase – and that doesn’t happen all that often; I did notice that the last ream I bought had a ‘sustainable forest initiative’ label but was wrapped in plastic!

Most of the pens I have are from organizations or hotels…lots of plastic there. My plan is to stop picking up pens at events until I have drawn down my supply! There are a few that might take common refills – a way to reduce the amount of new plastic but not eliminate it.

I am already packing waste free lunches and carrying a reusable water bottle…but I need to make sure the students in the core training think about doing it if they are not as far along in their plastic reduction journey.

Check out 8 Plastic-Free School Supplies & Zero-Waste Tips

Added note: I recently purchased printer paper. It was the only kind that was wrapped in paper rather than plastic…and it was the least expensive per sheet…and its packaging said it was sustainably made from sawmill waste chips using wind energy and hydropower!

Plastics Crisis – Dryer Lint

A few weeks ago, I laundered the polyester table clothes that were used for our tables at the Butterfly Festival. I don’t usually put synthetic fabrics in the dryer (heat causes them to wear faster) but the table clothes were too big to hang dry without a long clothesline – which I don’t have. It was an opportunity to look at the lint from synthetic fabric.

I used my phone and a hand lens too look at the tangle of thin fibers. It is easy to imagine them breaking up into small segments. They are already microscopic in diameter. This is fabric that does not look fuzzy at all – but is still shedding fibers. It also provides an inkling of what is shed during washing as well (and is mostly leaving in the water).

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Years ago, there was a suggestion to put dryer lint out for birds to use as nest material. DON’T DO THAT unless you are sure that what was dried is 100% natural fibers – which is very rare these days.

Plastics Crisis – Avoiding Plastic Wrap

This is the season for watermelon! In prior years, I generally cut it and put some plastic wrap across the portion I was putting back in the refrigerator. This year – I thought about an alternative…. wanting to avoid single use plastic entirely.

My solution: turn the watermelon upside down on a tray! So simple. If the juice leaks a little, the tray will hold it, so it is better than plastic wrap from that perspective.  I found myself wondering why I didn’t think of this before.

Plastics Crisis – Bring your own…

One of the biggest ways to reduce single use plastics is to remember to ‘bring your own’ more frequently. The easy ones for me are:

Bring your own water bottle. I have three different reusable water/beverage containers – stainless (although – aargh! – with some plastic in their lids). It’s very easy to refill them; lots of places have water fountains that include a bottle filler above the fountain! I even use my water bottle when I brush my teeth in hotels – avoiding a single use plastic cup that they provide.

Bring your own bag/basket. I have a collection of bags that I use for my usual shopping (square bottoms, sturdy enough to handle heavy items, easy to keep clean). I keep a canvas bag in my car and a stuff bag in my purse for ad hoc shopping. I’ve recently added a basket to my collection but haven’t quite gotten used to it. Overall – I manage to avoid single use plastic shopping bags almost completely.

Bring your own eating utensil. I am reusing a gel pin tin for carrying silverware when I travel. If I buy a fast-food salad, I can avoid the plasticware – although I haven’t figured out how to avoid the plastic container it comes in. I generally put the used forks in the ice chest and then into the dishwasher when I get home.

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Bring your own bowl. I pack a glass container when I travel to Lewisville since the hotel breakfast has Styrofoam plates (the hot items are in metal trays, and the serving utensils are metal). I get my scrambled eggs and bacon in my own bowl…and use my own silverware too…..making the breakfast plastic free!

Bring your own cup. When I travel in the wintertime, I bring my own ceramic cup to make hot tea (with my own tea) in the hotel microwave. The cups they provide are Styrofoam or plastic-coated paper….and more hotels have put in Keurig things which have a lot of single use plastic.

Bring your own snacks. I frequently cut up veggies or make my own chicken/egg salad and put it in my own reusable (glass) container for when I am away from home at mealtime. It does mean that I am taking an ice chest as well. During the summer – I always have an ice chest when I travel to keep food and toiletries from getting too hot!

These are just a few ideas of how ‘bring your own’ can reduce your contributions to the huge piles of single use plastics.

Plastics Crisis – Lemon Juice in Glass

I recently found lemon juice in a green glass bottle – that I hadn’t found in the store before. Previously I had made a special shopping trip to a store than carried a brand of lemon juice in glass, so this new development has eliminated that special shopping trip. I like the shape and color of this packaging too.

I recently found lemon juice in a green glass bottle – that I hadn’t found in the store before. Previously I had made a special shopping trip to a store than carried a brand of lemon juice in glass, so this new development has eliminated that special shopping trip. I like the shape and color of this packaging too.

Perhaps it is an indicator that retailers/manufacturers are beginning to get the idea that food – particularly acidic or fatty foods – should not be in plastic. The lemon juice is organic too! The distributor is in the US, but the label clearly says that it is a Product of Italy. Does that mean it might have a 10% tariff on it? Why aren’t US distributors and manufacturers more engaged in the transition to better packaging?

On another front – I am slowly using up tea bags that might have plastic fibers in them. From now on, I will cut the bags open and dump the leaves in the pot. That will eliminate the burst of microplastics from the fibers when they are exposed to heat…but it is messy too since the tea leaves in the bags are so powdery; I will use a metal strainer, but it will probably will not catch them all.

It’s always challenging to really eliminate sources of microplastics!

Plastics Crisis – Too Hard?

There is an overwhelming amount of plastic in our lives and the existing options to reduce it are becoming less effective as it increases in ways we can’t control (in the air we breathe, the soil and water our food grows in, for example). It is a huge challenge that tactical decision making of government and business seems primed to ignore – deciding that the financial benefits near term of more plastics outweigh the health impacts to life on earth.

Even the most forward-looking countries/states have only taken actions that are ‘baby steps’ to address a problem that is growing by ‘giant steps.’

It is depressing to think that our lives will be less healthy…perhaps shortened…but the path we’ve taken (was it a choice or did we simply follow along with the direction the technology directed?) seems to have few forks toward a healthier planet.

In the end, the plastics crisis may turn out to be something we don’t address…that the problem we’ve created is too hard for us to resolve.

I am consciously deciding to push back on the idea that it is ‘too hard’ … to continue to look for ways to change the plastics scenario in my own life while acknowledging that there could be a point that I give up --- but that time is not today.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 20, 2026

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

06/06/2026 New York Times Looking for Love in the Big City? It’s Tough for Bowerbirds, Too. - The birds will choose artificial (plastic) accouterments over natural ones when given the choice.

06/05/2026 CNN Health Ultraprocessed food scientists say Americans are ‘fed up’ with industry and government inaction - Up to 70% of Americans want companies banned from advertising ultraprocessed foods on children’s television, while up to 87% want government safety testing for all laboratory-made chemicals long before they can be used in any food product, according to the survey published in the American Journal of Public Health. According to the US Centers for Disease and Prevention, 53% of American adults get most of their calories from ultraprocessed foods. For children ages 1 to 18, the percentage rises to 62%.

06/04/2026 The Conversation Poison or poverty: the impossible economic choices facing Ghana’s e‑waste workers - Agbogbloshie, in Ghana’s capital city, Accra, is a sprawling, open-air scrapyard located next to a lagoon and a growing informal settlement. Roughly 6,000 people dismantle, recycle and burn old and broken electronics there. Informal recycling provides an income for workers which is often relatively better than other available work. But the side effects of burning plastic and metal or using acid to extract minerals from the e-waste are devastating to human health and the natural environment.

06/05/2026 The Conversation A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas – and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems - A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas.  A new study analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste. The study found pronounced increases in toxic air pollution. When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins. These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders. Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland. However, it will take time to see the effects.

06/02/2026 YaleEnvironment360 Tire Pollution May Threaten Human Health, Study Finds - Tiny particles of rubber cast off by car tires, which have long been known to harm wildlife, may also pose a risk to humans.

05/06/2026 Toxic-Free Future Endocrine-Disrupting Plastic Chemicals in Breast Milk - Testing found bisphenols, melamine and related chemicals, and triclosan in breast milk samples, pointing to widespread exposure from everyday products and materials, including plastics, food-contact materials, receipts, antimicrobial treatments, and many other products. To understand the potential health risks from tire pollution, researchers exposed human immune cells to a mixture of tire-derived pollutants as well as 6PPD-quinone (one of the known pollutants from tire rubber) on its own. The mixture caused rapid cell death, among other harms.

05/18/2026 NPR Thousands of U.S. countertop workers could have damaged lungs - Occupational health experts who have petitioned California to ban quartz say this material "is too toxic to fabricate and install safely, and education and enforcement alone will not be sufficient to curtail the escalating occupational health emergency caused by this product. A few weeks ago, in the first quartz and silicosis lawsuit to come to trial outside of California, a jury in Colorado awarded damages to an injured worker - finding that actions by several companies led to his illnesses. 

05/19/2026 Planetizen Public works officials indicate alarming decline in condition of water and sewer systems - According to a survey in the National League of Cities’ 2026 Municipal Infrastructure Conditions Report, the confidence of public works and city officials in their water systems has dropped significantly, with just 39% of officials surveyed saying their own water and sewer infrastructure is 'satisfactory,' down from 82% in 2022.

06/03/2026 Artnet Crystal Bridges’s New Expansion Makes Room for More of Its Story - Crystal Bridges is now set to unveil its new 114,000-square-foot expansion on June 6–7, complemented by five acres of specially landscaped trails, gardens, a stream, and a 15,000-square-foot pond, all situated within the greater 134-acre forested park that the museum calls home. (Maybe time to make another visit the museum/Bentonville, AR).

05/28/2026 NASA A Shift in What’s Shaping U.S. Landscapes - For most of the past four decades, observations from the Landsat satellite record show that humans have dominated changes to the U.S. landscape. Recent research revealed a shift in that trend, suggesting that disasters might be catching up.

Plastics Crisis: Mowed Trash

I hate it when I don’t see a plastic snack wrapper in the grass….hear the change in the mower as it shreds the trash. It’s still macro plastic – big enough to pick up – although more work since it is in smaller pieces. I think this one was Oreo cookies. Neither my husband or I eat them, but someone did and the wrapper escaped. If it was paper I could simply leave it to decay.

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Mowing is likely one of the interim steps that is quite common with plastic trash along roadside that will become microplastics more quickly than they would have otherwise. There are people that pick-up trash along roadsides, but they probably don’t pick up any of the mowed bits.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 13, 2026

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

06/1/2026 Science Daily Your kitchen sponge is releasing microplastics every time you wash dishes – Use sponges with lower plastic (or no plastic) content! Using less water for dishes has and even greater environmental impact.

05/30/2026 Clean Technica Illinois First Great Lakes State to Enact Plastic Pellet Pollution Law - Just days before the end of the 2026 legislative session, the Illinois state legislature passed HB4418, which defines pre-production plastic pellets as a pollutant and gives the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency the authority to establish policies to prevent them from being released into the environment. eople complain about government overreach and faceless bureaucrats, but the truth is that without legislation such as this and governmental organizations like the Illinois EPA to enforce it, the world would be a much more toxic and dangerous place. It is long past time to stop giving polluters a free pass so they can maximize their profits.

05/11/2026 RNZ Is it really possible to live a plastic-free life? - Our lives are riddled with plastic, and growing evidence suggests it is affecting our health in myriad ways. (New Zealand)

04/27/2026 Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology Endocrine-disrupting chemicals in breast milk and early life exposure for infants in the United States – Melamine, cyanuric acid, BPA, BPS, and triclosan were detected with high frequency in breast milk samples in the study, and our study suggests that breast milk is an important exposure pathway for these chemicals among nursing infants. Given the importance of breastfeeding for infant health, our study highlights the need to investigate potential health effects of these chronic exposures.

04/26/2026 Earth.com Plastics are entering food crops and stunting their growth - Farmers, waste managers, and regulators now face a harder truth: plastic in soil can slow crops, gather around roots, and enter plants. The next step is tracing whether weathered nanoplastics reach edible tissues at harvest and deciding which plastic inputs should be cut first.

04/02/2026 Medical Xpress Seven days without plastic contact slashes phthalates and bisphenols in body – A clinical trial investigating levels of plastic chemicals in the human body has found that a low-plastic diet could be a fast and effective way to reduce exposure. (Australia)

05/31/2026 The Conversation Trees and greenery can cool cities by as much as 18°C – but only if it’s the right type - Field measurements from Melbourne, Munich and Hong Kong were compared to test how different kinds of urban planting changed the heat people experience outdoors. Layered vegetation – where trees are combined with shrubs and ground cover – often cooled cities more effectively than trees alone. We also found local climate and street design strongly shaped whether greening worked well. Cities need planting strategies tailored to local conditions rather than universal greening formulas. In parks and open green spaces, layered vegetation can provide strong cooling while also supporting biodiversity. In dense streets, planners may need to balance shade with ventilation.

05/28/2026 My Modern Met Hand-Colored Photos From 19th-Century Japan Offer a Glimpse of Traditional Life - Photography arrived in Japan very early—a little less than a decade after it was invented in Europe. Throughout the 1850s, as Japan opened up to foreigners, the images from this time capture not only a nearly forgotten moment in history but also a rare transitional time in which traditional Japanese life was being affected by rapid modernization.

05/20/2026 BBC Chile's Atacama Desert is one of the darkest places on Earth. But now the light is intruding - The battle against encroaching artificial light in the Atacama is a microcosm of a global problem. As electric bulbs have proliferated, around 80% of Earth's population now lives under light-polluted skies. A recent study of star visibility found that, on average globally, the sky brightened due to light pollution by almost 10% a year between 2011-2022. If a person could see 250 stars at the start of the period, the researchers found, they would only spot 100 by the end.

5/28/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Giant, Destructive Hail Is Becoming More Common with Climate Change - A new study finds that these giant hailstones will become more common as the climate warms from human-caused carbon emissions. In models of predicted future warming, the researchers found that the frequency of hail larger than a marble will increase 47 percent by 2100 in a worst-case scenario. Even in a more optimistic model of future climate change, the potential for storms producing giant hail will rise 38 percent.

Plastics Crisis – Presentation to Master Gardeners

June is a popular month for conferences this year. The Missouri Master Gardener conference was this weekend, and I did an hour-long presentation on Plastics/Microplastics on Saturday!

The ‘room’ was a curtained off corner of a ballroom! I arrived early since I was using my own Mac for the slideshow and I wanted to make sure it connected with the AV system in the room. The connection was easy (HDMI) but the set up was awkward with a table for the laptop against the same wall as the screen. I managed.

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There were twelve people in the audience….they all seemed to be very engaged and the 20 minutes I had reserved for questions and discussion was filled with great interactions and afterward I got 2 master naturalists requests (one wanting to get on the core training contact list and another wanted to transition from another chapter to the Springfield one)….and then there was person that wants to write an article about my topic for a Missouri journal.  It was an hour well spent! It occurred to me that the charts I prepared for this talk will just be a baseline that I will tweak for all my subsequent presentations; there is new information coming out all the time and I will always add charts to focus on the aspects of microplastics that would be of most interest to the particular audience (in this case it was gardeners).

The only handout I had was my ‘reduce your microplastic exposure’ mind map and several people picked one up as the presentation time ended. I had put some blank paper in with the mind map pages too…and am glad I did – since that is how I got contact info for follow-up!

This is my first hour long presentation in a long time. I did a few shorter ones in Maryland, but they were usually associated with a hike (searching for skunk cabbage is one I remember) or an activity (creating Zentangle tiles).  It was a skill that I used frequently during my career…but that frequency ended 14 years ago. Based on the way I felt during the presentation and reaction from the audience, it is a skill I have easily refreshed.

Plastics Crisis – Forever Plastics (poem)

Ronald Carson’s Forever Plastics poem is worth a look…I keep coming back to read it again to help shift my perspective…to enable better communication about the looming ramifications of our current (and projected) plastics usage.

 He says: “In this poem, I wanted plastics to speak in the first-person plural, tracing the path from postwar convenience to biological saturation, where the environment is no longer outside us but lodged within us.”

 The last stanza sums is up:

We are the heirloom you did not ask for, 
the inheritance that cannot be refused, 
the future fossil of your present, 
already here.

 See the whole poem here.

Plastics Crisis – 10 Visions

A lot of work now to reduce plastics is ‘baby steps’ because we must start somewhere. We need some successes to encourage more people to care about the impact of plastics on ourselves and all living things on our planet – to get the ball rolling to push back on the laissez-faire approach toward the plastic producers that seems to be the status quo around the world. We know that it is an uphill effort and will take a lot more people becoming alarmed/getting involved.

I’ve been thinking recently about what I would like to see beyond ‘baby steps’…and have picked 10 ‘visions’ to share in this week’s Plastic Crisis post.

1. Plastic-Free labeling on food/cosmetic packaging is common – and plastic-free products are widely available. Remaining plastic packaging is required to be free of toxic chemicals particularly endocrine disrupting chemicals.

2. Tea bags, cans, and snack wrappers don’t contain plastic and there are no single-use plastic shopping bags.

3. Plastic bottles for food and cosmetics are phased out…replaced with glass or distributed in dry form and packaged in paper/cardboard.

4. Biodegradable tires have been developed – created without toxic biproducts and recycled at the end of life into new tires. Fragments from tire wear biodegrade in the environment.

5. Plastic producers are paying for plastic waste disposal (using less toxic methods than available in 2025…i.e. not releasing toxic chemicals into the air, water, soil…so no landfill or burning, etc.)

6. Mining of landfill material from high plastic times is beginning to reduce the ‘time bomb’ toxicity of the plastic era.

7. Synthetic carpets and plastic/vinyl flooring are replaced with biodegradable materials.

8. Water treatment plants filter out most microplastics …and technology is being developed to reduce nano-plastic particles as well.   

9. The perception of plastic is ‘toxic’ rather than ‘clean/sterile’ as it was historically.

10. Chemicals are considered toxic to humans until proven safe. There will be no more ‘forever’ chemicals that are new and heavily used….and then discovered to be toxic.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 23, 2026

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

05/10/26 Poets.org Forever Plastics – A poem by Ronald Carson. He says “In this poem, I wanted plastics to speak in the first-person plural, tracing the path from postwar convenience to biological saturation, where the environment is no longer outside us but lodged within us.”

04/22/2026 The New York Times You Paid to Have Old Clothes Recycled. Here’s What That Really Means. - Collection services offer convenience, but most garments are shredded into low-grade stuffing or sent abroad to an uncertain fate. The most important thing, experts and environmental activists say, is to buy less in the first place. It’s easier to deal with clothes responsibly if there are fewer of them to begin with.

05/7/2026 Super Age Life Expectancy Gains Are Slowing. Your Choices Are More Important Than Ever - The future of longevity will most likely be shaped less by sweeping public health revolutions and more by targeted, personalized strategies: slowing biological aging, optimizing midlife health, and extending the years we remain active, engaged, and independent.

05/12/2026 Planetizen 16% of roads that received federal funds remain in poor condition - State DOTs are spending most of that money on highway expansions instead of repair and maintenance work. And "Because increasingly lax reporting standards conceal broken roads from public view, and DOTs routinely mis-categorize expensive expansion projects as simple 'maintenance' or lump them into a mysterious 'other' category, Transportation for America suspects the national highway network is actually even more drastically overbuilt than it appears on paper."

05/11/2026 I’m Plastic Free How to Reduce Microplastics Exposure: The Ultimate Guide & Checklist - This guide breaks down exactly how microplastics enter your system, and provides a practical, but very thorough, science-backed checklist to reduce your exposure across your home, diet, and daily habits.

05/12/2026 BBC 'Fatbergs' are taking over city sewers - scientists are fighting back - Reeking coagulations of grease and debris are clotting sewers around the world on a colossal scale. Cities are deploying new technologies to control this modern menace. New York City – where 40% of sewer backups are due to grease – spends around $18.8m annually degreasing and removing blockages from the sewers beneath its streets. 

5/12/2026 National Parks Traveler Musings About the Parks | Things I Worry About – A list from Kurt Rapanshek. He ends the post this way: “Without question, there are many, many things that are uplifting about exploring the National Park System. But if the Park Service truly is going to preserve these places and their natural resources for future generations, it really needs a lot more help from Congress and presidential administrations.”

5/11/2026 Smithsonian Magazine See 15 Stunning Images That Won the German Society for Nature Photography’s Annual Contest – Beautiful and thought-provoking images.

05/06/2026 YaleEnvironment360 Airborne Microplastics May Be Warming the Planet - Tiny particles of plastic amassing in the atmosphere may be intensifying warming. Darker bits of plastic are absorbing heat. And even though lighter particles are reflecting sunlight, with a cooling influence, in the aggregate microplastics are having a warming effect. The warming impact is tiny, far less than the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, and only a fraction of the impact of soot. The microplastic emissions produced globally each year have roughly the same warming effect as running 200 coal power plants for that year….but more study is needed

05/04/2026 CNN The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a plastic trash nightmare. It could also be part of a much bigger, hidden problem - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a significant source of airborne microplastics and nanoplastics, but there are many other places where tiny plastic particles can be whipped up into the skies, including from landfills, roadside litter and car tires. Colored plastics, especially red, yellow, blue and black, absorbed around 75 times more light than pristine, non-pigmented plastics.

05/10/2026 Science Daily Antarctica is melting from below and scientists say it’s worse than expected - Deep beneath floating ice shelves, long channels carved into the ice appear to trap warmer ocean water, dramatically speeding up melting from below. Even regions of East Antarctica once considered relatively stable may be far more vulnerable than scientists realized. Researchers warn that current climate models may be missing this dangerous process entirely, meaning future sea level rise could be underestimated.

Plastics Crisis – Plastic and Conservation After School Program

I participated in a program about plastics and conservation for an after-school program at an area school. The grade range for the 43 participants was first through eighth grade. We did the program twice…to make the group size more management for the activities.

The gym was equipped with a projector for our short slide show to set the stage (featured a short video of animals in Missouri, a beautiful view of the Missouri river/a view of the river bank full of plastic waste), a little about how plastic is produced, and a picture of peanut the turtle (a turtle rescued with band of plastic around its middle deforming its shell).

There were two activities that the students rotated through: 1) a web game where a ball of yarn was thrown to participants in a circle representing parts of a Missouri ecosystem  to help the students visualize what happens as plastic impacts a web of life– usually in negative way and 2) looking at a piece of synthetic fabric under a microscope and talking more how many things we use every day are plastic and are shedding tiny pieces as we wear them…and launder them.

The whole group was back together for the last activity. There was a bin of water to represent a river and a small empty bin to represent a landfill. Every 30 seconds another small bin of trash was dumped into the ‘river’….and there was an effort to scoop it up and put it in the ‘landfill.’ It didn’t take long before 1) the landfill was overflowing and 2) there were still some trash in the river that we didn’t get out fast enough!

As we summed up, we asked what kinds of things they could do to reduce plastics…lots of interesting ideas emerged. When we asked if they thought their school could try a plastic free lunch day next school year …they were enthusiastic. Some of them said they should try a week or a month plastic free. It might not be as hard for their school since the cafeteria has reusable items. They agreed that those that brought their lunch might need to rethink small plastic bags!

At the end we were handed Thank You notes the children had made!

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Plastics Crisis – Earth Day Music Festival

My second Earth Day Festival for 2026 was Springfield’s Earth Day Music Festival - a plastic-free, leave-no-waste sustainability-driven live music festival. For Beyond Plastics Ozarks, it was our first tabling event. Our goal was to talk to festival goers about reducing plastics in tangible ways…hand out donated reusable bags to those willing to use them rather than taking the store-provided single use plastic bags…and develop a list of people willing to join our efforts.

I started the day early since I was bringing the materials for the table: tables, banner, camp chairs, umbrella with weighted base (and extra weights), info sheets from Show-me Less Plastic, and a mind map I created for what individuals can start doing at home. I had started adding rocks to make sure papers did not blow away but, once I looked at the forecast and saw it was going to be very breezy, I added decorative bookends to the bins….and there were 55 donated bags of various sizes/colors to hand out. The collapsible wagon I had recently purchased from Costco held everything which meant I didn’t have to carry anything more than a few steps. I was at the venue early enough to park in a nearby garage so I simply loaded my wagon after I parked and walked across the street with it rather than unload at the curb before I parked the car.

Our assigned space was under a tree! I had an umbrella that I set up for a few hours but took it down after the wind got too gusty; the tree provided plenty of shade. Other than the wind gusts, the weather was perfect for the festival.

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The rocks and bookends worked great. After I got them arranged well, there were no papers blowing from our table. The indoor plants vendor next door was challenged to keep smaller plants on the shelves. They kept blowing off and landing in our booth! A booth further down that was doing a craft (nature stamps on cards) occasionally had cards flying.

I was at the table most of the time from about 9:30 to 6…setting up initially for the festival to open at 11…and packing up at 6 when the evening musicians were just setting up. I appreciated being able to leave before the crowds…just as I had arrived before the crowds.

It was a good first tabling – over 100 people stopped to talk and over 25 people indicated there were interested in learning more. Of course – this event being plastic free was probably a friendlier audience than we will find generally. I learned more about tabling on a windy day (bookends worked great…the umbrella did not)…and that the wagon was a great purchase for this type of event.

I did browse the other tables at mid-day…came home with a free smooth sumac to plant in a back corner of my yard. Lunch was 3 tacos in the compostable container from one of the food trucks. I refilled my water bottle at the water wagon a few times! Overall – a productive day for Beyond Plastics Ozarks…and enjoyable too with music and dancing just down the hill for our booth.

Plastics Crisis – Acrylic hats/sweaters

When I was rearranging my closet for the season (putting away winter clothes and getting out summer clothes), I decided to donate my fuzzy acrylics rather than saving them for next winter. They are the items in my wardrobe that shed the most plastic fibers even though I wash them in cold water in a laundry bag and air dry them flat. The items were in two categories – sweaters and a slouch hat that I crocheted recently from a skein of acrylic yard I bought years ago.

Both items can be replaced with similar items made with natural fibers next winter. They might be a bit more expensive, but my clothes tend to last a long time - so it is worth it  to buy wool, silk, or cotton sweaters…and it is easy to find cotton crochet thread/yarns for making slouch hats!